Frequently-Asked Questions

We've seen how Virus-Avoidance Strategies, such as Social Distancing, Lockdowns, and Shutdowns, cause more deaths by mimicking our annual Winter lockdowns, a yearly period of greater viral deaths, but just how many lives could be saved by not using Virus-Avoidance Strategies?

Let's take the example of Florida, which gave a shutdown order on April 1st that sent their Covid-19 deadliness surging upward until reopenings were fully implemented around June 2nd:

Without using Virus-Avoidance Strategies, Florida would likely have seen a flat line on deadliness from April 1, just like Bangladesh:

So, let's take a look at some simple math to figure out how many lives could have been saved in Florida by simply treating this year as a normal cold season.

On April 1st, Florida's Deaths-Per-Case was at 1.3%, when the lockdown order was given. We'll use this as the baseline for a flat line, assuming that the disease stayed at the same level of deadliness as it did in Bangladesh.

It took Florida until July 19th to return back down to a Deaths-Per-Case of 1.4%, their low since their initial lockdown, so we'll use that as an end date, for 110 total days. Note that Florida still has not reached the lows seen prior to lockdown, suggesting that longer-term damage was done in terms of the deadliness of their Covid-19 strains, likely from the effects of Social Distancing and the resulting terrorization of their population.

Using 1.3% as the baseline, we then calculate the 'Excess Deaths Per Case' for each day, by subtracting 1.3 from the percentage reached each day. That gives us an Excess Deaths-Per-Case resulting from the effects of the lockdown and Virus-Avoidance Strategies.

To get the number of Excess Deaths for each day, caused by the effects of Virus-Avoidance Strategies, we multiply the number of New Cases for each day by the Excess Deaths-Per-Case rate for that day, which gives us the number of Excess Deaths that will result from each day's number of New Cases.

We then sum the number of Excess Deaths from each day to get a total number of Excess Deaths caused by the effects of Virus-Avoidance Strategies, which we can then compare against the actual total number of deaths experienced to get a percentage of total deaths caused by the response.

In the case of Florida, 4,881 deaths were experienced in the 110 days from April 1 to July 19. The number of Excess Deaths caused by Virus-Avoidance Strategies was 3,540, or 72.5% of the deaths experienced in those 110 days. These were needless deaths caused by our response to the virus.

As of 5/12/2023, the United States has seen 1,074,502 total deaths in the Covid-19 pandemic.

If the United States saw the same Excess Death rate as Florida caused by Social Distancing, Lockdowns, and Shutdowns, then an additional 779,014 were needless deaths caused by our response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

This suggests that without Social Distancing, Lockdowns, and Shutdowns, the United States could have seen only 295,488 Covid-19 deaths, compared to a usual annual seasonal cold-and-flu death rate of 57,000 per year.

For reference, the full table for Florida is below: